Look for common ground on guns

Fatigue seems to have set in over Americans following the latest mass shootings, and for good reason. The numbers are staggering.

So far this year, we’ve had 27 school shootings, according to Education Week. Last week’s mass murder in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was the biggest since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting 10 years ago. Legislatively, nothing was done then, and most of us expect nothing to be done this time, either.

At this pace, our nation will easily surpass the 34 school shootings that Education Week counted in 2021. Moreover, it’s only part of another growing statistic — 214 mass shootings nationwide so far this year. It’ll be another banner year for death and destruction across our nation.

I wonder, will there be a tipping point, when our broken Congress will find a way do something about this? As divided as we are both culturally and politically, it’s hard to see — but I contend it’s still possible.

We’ve got to start on common ground, and believe it or not, there’s plenty.

First, let’s take the issue of guns. We Americans might disagree passionately on our right to bear arms, but polls show a sizable majority agree that assault weapons should be tightly regulated if not totally banned from the general population.

Assault weapons killed the children in Newtown and Uvalde. The death toll at both those schools wouldn’t have been nearly as high if the killers hadn’t been armed with an assault rifle. Most of us agree that’s a reasonable restraint on our Second Amendment rights.

Mental illness is also a big part of the problem; can we agree on that? Sure, mental illnesses have always been with us, but life in the 21st century is making things worse. Rather than uniting us, the internet has divided us; instead of bringing us together, people are being pushed to the angry fringes. Still others become isolated in artificial worlds of virtual violence and alternative realities, and it’s messing with their heads.

Common sense tells us that anyone who is willing to go out and kill people randomly and in mass is a sick human being. Maybe they don’t suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or any other serious mental illnesses — one study attributes only about 11% of the mass murders to those with a mental disorder — but as far as I’m concerned, there is a certain insanity to any such act. That, and evil.

I’ll leave the diagnosis to the doctors, but it doesn’t take an M.D. or Ph.D. to see something wrong in a man, or a kid, whose outrage grows so great that he’s willing to kill, and be killed, to express his anger.

It’s clear that people on both sides of our cultural and political divide want action. The right wants more cops at schools, even armed teachers; most on the left would agree on the former and disagree on the latter.

And the left wants more restrictions on the purchase of firearms, especially on assault-style weapons; the right is adamantly opposed to more restrictions, although many agree the assault rifles should be tightly controlled.

Maybe if we start where we agree, we can actually get Congress to agree on some modest and effective changes in our gun laws.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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